Theoretical grammar 3

The noun is the central lexical unit of language. It is the main nominative unit of speech. As any other part of
speech, the noun can be characterized by three criteria: semantic (the meaning),morphological (the form and
grammatical categories) and syntactical (functions, distribution). The noun is a class of words denoting entity (a
separate unit that is complete and has its own characteristics).
1.

Semantic features of the noun.

The noun possesses the grammatical meaning of thingness, substantiality. According to different principles of
classification nouns fall into several subclasses:
1.
2.
3.

According to the type of nomination they may be proper and common;

According to the form of existence they may be animate and inanimate. Animate nouns in their turn
fall into human and non-human.
According to their quantitative structure nouns can be countable and uncountable.

The categorical meaning of nouns is substance, thingness, though they can also denote abstract entities, such as
qualities and states (e.g. freedom, wish, friendship).
Nouns fall under two classes: According to the type of nomination they may be proper and common;
a) Proper nouns are individual, names given to separate persons or things. As regards their meaning proper
nouns may be personal names (Shakespeare), geographical names (London), the names of the months and of the
days of the week, names of ships, hotels, clubs, etc.
A large number of nouns now proper were originally common nouns (Brown, Smith, Mason).
Proper nouns may change their meaning and become common nouns.
b) Common nouns are names that can be applied to any individual persons or things (e.g. man, dog, book),
collections of similar individuals or things regarded as a single unit (e. g. peasantry, family), materials (e. g. snow,
iron, cotton) or abstract notions (e.g. kindness, development).
Thus there are different groups of common nouns: class nouns, collective nouns, nouns of material and
abstract nouns.
1. Class nouns denote persons or things belonging to a class. They are countable and have two numbers: singular
and plural. They are generally used with an article.
2. Collective nouns denote a number or collection of similar individuals or things as a single unit. Collective
nouns fall under the following groups:
(a) nouns used only in the singular and denoting-a number of things collected together and regarded as a single
object: foliage, machinery.
(b) nouns which are singular in form though plural in meaning: police, poultry, cattle, people, gentry. They are
usually called nouns of multitude. When the subject of the sentence is a noun of multitude the verb used as
predicate is in the plural: I had no idea the police were so devilishly prudent. (Shaw)
(c) nouns that may be both singular and plural: family, crowd, fleet, nation.
3. Nouns of material denote material: iron, gold, paper, tea, water. They are uncountable and are generally used
without any article.
Nouns of material are used in the plural to denote different sorts of a given material. Nouns of material may turn
into class nouns (thus becoming countable) when they come to express an individual object of definite shape.
4. Abstract nouns denote some quality, state, action or idea: kindness, sadness, fight. They are usually
uncountable, though some of them may be countable. Abstract nouns may change their meaning and become class
nouns. This change is marked by the use of the article and of the plural number: beauty a beauty beauties.
2.

Morphological features of the noun.

In accordance with the morphological structure of the stems all nouns can be classified
into: simple, derived ( stem + affix, affix + stem thingness); compound ( stem+ stem armchair )
and composite ( the Hague ). The noun has morphological categories of number and case. Some scholars admit the

existence of the category of gender. Structurally nouns are differentiated into simple (boy; street; car; dog; people,
etc.), derived (singer; brightness; friendship) and compound (bombshell; bridgehead; merry-go-round) types.
Due to the following morphological characteristics nouns can be classified in following ways:
1. Nouns that can be counted have two numbers: singular and plural (e. g. singular: a girl, plural: girls).
2. Nouns denoting living beings (and some nouns denoting lifeless things) have two case forms: the common
case and the genitive case.
3. It is doubtful whether the grammatical category of gender exists in Modern English for it is hardly ever
expressed by means of grammatical forms.
There is practically only one gender-forming suffix in Modern English, the suffix -es, expressing feminine
gender. It is not widely used: heir heir-ess; poet poet-ess; actor actr-ess; waiter waitr-ess
3.

Syntactic features of the noun.

Due the syntactical characteristics nouns can be classified in following ways. The chief syntactical functions of
the noun in the sentence are those of the subject and the object. But it may also be used as an attribute or a
predicative.
Syntactically nouns can function in the sentence as: subject: A man was walking in the street; object: I see a
man in the street; predicative (following the link verb in a compound nominal predicate): She is a teacher;
attribute: a stone wall; a gold medal; adverbial modifiers: Every morning (time) he goes to the bank (place).
A noun preceded by a preposition (a prepositional phrase) may be used as attribute, prepositional indirect object,
and adverbial modifier. To the left were clean panes of glass. (Ch. Bronte) (attribute)
The noun is generally associated with the article. Because of the comparative scarcity of morphological
distinctions in English in some cases only articles show that the word is a noun. A noun can be modified by an
adjective, a pronoun, by another noun or by verbals.
According to their morphological composition we distinguish simple, derivative and compound nouns.
1. Simple nouns are nouns which have neither prefixes nor suffixes. They are indecomposable: chair, table,
room, map, fish, work.
2. Derivative nouns are nouns which have derivative elements (prefixes or suffixes or both): reader, sailor,
blackness, childhood, misconduct, inexperience.
Productive noun-forming suffixes are: -er: reader, teacher, worker; -ist: communist, telegraphist, dramatist; -ess:
heiress, hostess, actress; -ness: carelessness, madness, blackness; -ism: socialism, nationalism, imperialism
Unproductive suffixes are: -hood: childhood, manhood; -dom: freedom; -ship: friendship, relationship; -meat:
development; -ance: importance; -ence: dependence; -ty: cruelty; -ity: generosity
3. Compound nouns are nouns built from two or more stems. Compound nouns often have one stress. The
meaning of a compound often differs from the meanings of its elements.
The main types of compound nouns are as follows:
(a) noun-stem+noun-stem: appletree, snowball;
(b) adjective-stem+noun-stem: blackbird, bluebell;
(c) verb-stem+noun-stem: pickpocket; the stem of a gerund or of a participle may be the first component of a
compound noun: dining-room, reading-hall, dancing-girl.

4.

The category of gender.

In Indo-European languages the category of gender is presented with flexions. It is not based on sex distinction,
but it is purely grammatical.
According to some language analysts (B.Ilyish, F.Palmer, and E.Morokhovskaya), nouns have no
category of gender in Modern English. Prof. Ilyish states that not a single word in Modern English shows any
peculiarities in its morphology due to its denoting male or female being. Thus, the words husband and wife do not
show any difference in their forms due to peculiarities of their lexical meaning. The difference between such nouns
as actor and actress is a purely lexical one. In other words, the category of sex should not be confused with the

category of gender, because sex is an objective biological category. It correlates with gender only when sex
differences of living beings are manifested in the language grammatically (e.g. tiger tigress).
Gender distinctions in English are marked for a limited number of nouns. In present-day English there are
some morphemes which present differences between masculine and feminine (waiter waitress, widow
widower). This distinction is not grammatically universal. It is not characterized by a wide range of occurrences
and by a grammatical level of abstraction. Only a limited number of words are marked as belonging to masculine,
feminine or neuter. The morpheme on which the distinction between masculine and feminine is based in English is
a word-building morpheme, not form-building.
Still, other scholars (M.Blokh, John Lyons) admit the existence of the category of gender. Prof. Blokh states
that the existence of the category of gender in Modern English can be proved by the correlation of nouns with
personal pronouns of the third person (he, she, it). Accordingly, there are three genders in English: the neuter (nonperson) gender, the masculine gender, the feminine gender.
5.

The category of number.

The grammatical category of number is the linguistic representation of the objective category of quantity. The
number category is realized through the opposition of two form-classes: the plural form and the singular form.
There are different approaches to defining the category of number. Thus, some scholars believe that the category
of number in English is restricted in its realization because of the dependent implicit grammatical meaning of
countableness/uncountableness. The category of number is realized only within subclass of countable nouns, i.e.
nouns having numeric (discrete) structure.
Uncountable nouns have no category of number, for they have quantitative (indiscrete) structure. Two classes of
uncountables can be distinguished: singularia tantum (only singular) and pluralia tantum (only plural). M. Blokh,
however, does not exclude the singularia tantum subclass from the category of number. He calls such forms
absolute singular forms comparable to the common singular of countable nouns.
In Indo-European languages there are lots of nouns that dont fit into the traditional definition of the category
based on the notion of quantity. A word can denote one object, but it has the plural form. Or a noun can denote
more than one thing, but its form is singular. There is a definition of the category of number that overcomes this
inconsistency. It was worked out by prof. Isachenko. According to him, the category of number denotes marked
and unmarked discreteness (not quantity). A word in a singular form denotes unmarked discreteness whether it is a
book, or a sheep, or sheep. If an object is perceived as a discrete thing, it has the form of the plural number. Thus,
trousers and books are perceived as discrete object whereas a flock of sheep is seen as a whole. This definition is
powerful because it covers nearly all nouns while the traditional definition excludes many words.
The grammatical meaning of number may not coincide with the notional quantity: the noun in the singular
does not necessarily denote one object while the plural form may be used to denote one object consisting of several
parts. The singular form may denote:
a) oneness (individual separate object a cat);
b) generalization (the meaning of the whole class The cat is a domestic animal);
c) indiscreteness ( uncountableness - money, milk).
The plural form may denote:
a) the existence of several objects (cats);
b) the inner discreteness ( , jeans).
To sum it up, all nouns may be subdivided into three groups:
1. The

nouns

in

which

the

opposition of

explicit discreteness/indiscreteness is expressed:

cat::cats;
2. The nouns in which this opposition is not expressed explicitly but is revealed by syntactical and lexical
correlation in the context. There are two groups here:
A. Singularia tantum. It covers different groups of nouns: proper names, abstract nouns, material nouns,
collective nouns;

B. Pluralia tantum. It covers the names of objects consisting of several parts (jeans), names of sciences
(mathematics), names of diseases, games, etc.
3. The nouns with homogenous number forms. The number opposition here is not expressed formally but
is revealed only lexically and syntactically in the context: e.g. Look! A sheep is eating grass. Look! The sheep are
eating grass.
6.

The category of case.

In present-day linguistics case is used in two senses: 1) semantic, or logic, and 2) syntactic.
The semantic case concept was developed by C. J. Fillmore in the late 1960s, who introduced syntacticsemantic classification of cases. They show relations in the so-called deep structure of the sentence. According to
him, verbs may stand to different relations to nouns. There are 6 cases:
1. Agentive Case (A) John opened the door;
2. Instrumental case (I) The key opened the door; John used the key to open the door;
3. Dative Case (D) John believed that he would win (the case of the animate being affected by the state of
action identified by the verb);
4. Factitive Case (F) The key was damaged (the result of the action or state identified by the verb);
5. Locative Case (L) Chicago is windy;
6. Objective case (O) John stole the book.
The syntactic case concept dates back to the grammars of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. It is a case
whose main role is to indicate a relationship between constituents. To put it otherwise, its role is to indicate a
construction in syntax. Thus genitive is a case which marks one noun as dependent on another, e.g. Johns car. The
conception of case as a marker of a syntactic relation or a construction can be found in prescriptive, non-structural
descriptive and structural descriptive grammars. Prescriptivists spoke of the nominative, the dative, the genitive,
the accusative, and the ablative.
H. Sweets views (1925) rest on the syntactic conception of case: case to him is a syntactic relation that can
be realized syntactically or morphologically. He speaks of inflected and non-inflected cases (the genitive vs. the
common case). Non-inflected cases, according to the scholar, are equivalent to the nominative, vocative,
accusative, and dative of inflected languages. O. Jespersen (1933) speaks of the genitive and the common case.
Some grammarians (R. W. Pence (1947), H. Whitehall (1965), H. Shaw (1952)) give three cases in English nominative, genitive (possessive) and accusative (objective). This three-case system, based on the analogy of the
form of pronouns, remained extremely popular in the grammars of the 20th century, including some structural
grammars (H. Whitehall). H. Whitehall, however, does not reflect the general situation in the school of structural
grammar: structuralists at large recognize the existence of two cases - the genitive and the common.
Case expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word-group or sentence (my sisters coat). The
category of case correlates with the objective category of possession. The case category in English is realized
through then opposition: The Common Case/The Possessive Case (sister/sisters). However, in modern linguistics
the term genitive case is used instead of the possessive case because the meanings rendered by the `s sign
are not only those of possession. The scope of meanings rendered by the Genitive Case is the following:
1. Possessive Genitive : Marys father Mary has a father,
2. Subjective Genitive: The doctors arrival The doctor has arrived,
3. Objective Genitive : The mans release The man was released,
4. Genitive of origin: the boys story the boy told the story,
5. Descriptive Genitive: childrens books books for children
6. Genitive of measure and partitive genitive: a miles distance, a days trip
7. Appositive genitive: the city of London.
To avoid confusion with the plural, the marker of the genitive case is represented in written form with an
apostrophe. This fact makes possible disengagement of `s form from the noun to which it properly belongs. E.g.:
The man I saw yesterdays son, where -`s is appended to the whole group (the so-called group genitive). It may
even follow a word which normally does not possess such a formant, as in somebody elses book.

There is no universal point of view as to the case system in English.

Different scholars stick to a different number of cases.
1. There are two cases. (limited case theory) The Common one and The Genitive;
2. There are no cases at all, the form `s is optional because the same relations may be expressed by the ofphrase: the doctors arrival the arrival of the doctor;
3. There are three cases: the Nominative, the Genitive, the Objective due to the existence of objective
pronouns me, him, whom;
4. The theory of positional cases.
5. The theory of prepositional cases.
We adhere to the view that English does possess the category of case, which is represented by the opposition
of the two forms - the genitive vs. the non-genitive, or the common. The marked member of the opposition is the
genitive and the unmarked the common: both members express a relation - the genitive expresses a specific
relation (the relation of possession in the wide meaning of the word) while the common case expresses a wide
range of relations including the relation of possession, e.g. Kennedys house vs. the Kennedy house. While
recognizing the existence of the genitive case, we must say that the English genitive is not a classical case. Its
peculiarities are:
1) the inflection -s is but loosely connected with the noun (e.g. the Queen of Englands daughter; the man I
met yesterdays son);
2) genitive constructions are paralleled by corresponding prepositional constructions (e.g. Shakespeares
works vs. the works of Shakespeare);
3) the use of the genitive is mainly limited to nouns denoting living beings;
4) the inflection -s is used both in the singular and in the plural (e.g. a boys bicycle vs. the boys bicycles),
which is not typical of case inflexions.
7.

The category of thingness and abstract nouns.

8.

Animate and inanimate nouns.

9.

Proper and common nouns.

The noun class can be subdivided into the following semantic subclasses:
Proper and Common; Common Uncountable; Countable; Countable Abstract (hate); Concrete;
Uncountable Abstract (thought); Concrete.
Concrete Collective proper(milk); Mass
Concrete Collective Individual improper (crew)
Collective proper Animate (vermin) Inanimate (furniture)
Individual Animate Inanimate (toy)
Animate Personal Non-personal (child)(dog)